


and the sky came tumbling down

by dreamingofstarlight



Category: La Belle et la Bête | Beauty and the Beast (Fairy Tale), Schneewittchen | Snow White (Fairy Tale), Sleeping Beauty (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Dark, Emotional Abuse, F/M, Forced Marriage, Paranoia, Physical Abuse, Prose Poem, This is a train wreck I'm sorry, i have too many fairy tale thoughts, not a happy poem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22519720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamingofstarlight/pseuds/dreamingofstarlight
Summary: this is not a fairy tale
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	and the sky came tumbling down

**Author's Note:**

> comments/criticism appreciated

they all lived happily ever after

… 

wait.

look again.

… 

i. 

sleeping beauty’s skin is

mottled with hand-shaped bruises.

they manacle her wrists,

like macabre flowers, 

blossoms of purple and blue

she woke to pain

burning between her legs,

her screams swallowed by

the crush of a prince’s mouth.

he hadn’t even bothered to

remove his sword 

and it carves a thin line of blood down her hip.

a desperate laugh catches in her throat

because of course he’d take his

steel to bed with him

she’s just another conquest

on the bad days, 

her bruises throb under her dress

with the ghost of his blows

but he never touches her face.

he needs her smiling and perfect,

his quiet, submissive queen, 

but as she keeps her lips 

peeled back in a frozen grin, 

she imagines devouring him 

with her hatred

ii.

snow white‘s a ghost playing at being human;

her bones shatter like glass,

her arms are brittle branches,

her daggered ribs jut out beneath

papery skin.

she awoke with acid vengeance, 

the acrid taste of toxic fruit 

still lodged in her throat,

her anger crystallizing and

blooming into savage joy 

as her stepmother

dances herself to death

she sits at the feasting table,

watching white feet blister 

in red-hot shoes, her stepmother

shrouded with plumes of smoke,

but the nausea in her

stomach has nothing to do with the

smell of cauterized flesh.

it’s her wine - sickly sweet, tinged 

with the scent of poisoned apples -

her panic is a  vise 

over her jaw and she

refuses to drink because

she sees herself:

choking, face purpling, hands clutched

at her throat

iii.

belle’s mind is littered 

with cobwebs and mangled threads

her eyes are too large, too still, 

like empty pockets of space

she knows the beast - because he is

still a beast, though he’s cloaked

himself with human beauty - 

she knows he’s the same

beast who paid his selfishness with the

currency of her sacrifice, who

destroyed a human being with a constellation

of memories and desires - a girl with a

galaxy of dreams inside her -

all for a flower

there are flashes of the beast from 

time to time - small, ugly things

that make her teeth clench

and her body shudder - 

sometimes, 

she looks at him and sees

fangs instead of teeth .

sometimes, 

his shadowy hands have claws. 

sometimes,

she feels ice filming over

her lungs when she opens her mouth to

speak because she remembers

how he punished her

father’s mistake

… 

this is what they don’t tell you:

i. sleeping beauty raged,

silently cursing her husband and his cruelty

ii. snow white starved,

insisting poison trickled down her throat when she ate

iii. belle’s mind broke,

imprisoned with a monster she was supposed to love

… 

fairy tales aren’t

glittering gold or

clouds of sugar-spun dreams.

they blossom like the

roses you used to gather 

before their thorns stained your fingers

crimson with hidden blades


End file.
